Thanksgiving: Enjoy the holiday with family and friends, and wait some other day to do your Christmas shopping!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day!

It is a national holiday, set aside to give thanks and count our blessings. Most of us escaped Hurricane Sandy’s wrath. Most of us are still employed. Most of us are in varying degrees of good health.

Traditionally, it featured a sumptuous feast of roast turkey and all the trimmings. Family and friends gathered to partake of this meal and share fellowship.

Most people in America have the day off, except in those necessary safety and service professions that cannot be dispensed with, such as the military, the police and fire departments and hospital staff. Unfortunately, for them, Thanksgiving is just another day.

Oddly enough, for many other Americans, Thanksgiving has also become just another day.

Thanksgiving is quickly becoming a forgotten holiday…or its original purpose is quickly being forgotten. It has become completely overshadowed by the greed of the holiday shopping season.

Traditionally, the Christmas shopping season began on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving.

Christmas shopping now starts almost as soon as the “back to school” sales are over in September. Christmas decorations are up in the stores before Hallowe’en. “Black Friday” begins earlier every year.

It now starts on Thanksgiving Day itself, with national “Big Box” stores opening early that day, closing for a few hours, then reopening early in the evening.

Thanksgiving Day has been lost in the rush of Christmas shopping!

To quote Tom Lehrer: “Angels we have heard on high, telling us ‘go out and buy!’”

Some people lament corporate greed shown by the “Big Box” stores opening on Thanksgiving Day, but they will probably avail themselves of it. Corporate America wouldn’t do it if they didn’t know that consumers will show up; they know Americans only too well.

America has become a 24/7/365 society, demanding instant gratification. This is especially true of people who work 9 to 5 jobs, Monday through Friday. They have a four day weekend this week, and stores being open on Thanksgiving Day is a convenience. To the people who work in retail, it is just one less holiday that they can have off to spend time with their family and friends, making those jobs look less desirable.

Corporate America has long dispensed with any serious observance of national holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Veterans Day. Opening stores on Thanksgiving Day is a logical enough progression. Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are next on the list. But government offices, banking and law offices will continue to remain closed. After all, some people are more equal than others!

Less than fifty years ago, stores and businesses were closed on those holidays. Somehow, when far fewer people owned cars and there were far fewer labor saving devices around, people still managed to get their Christmas shopping done.

Now, there is simply not enough time! Or, so people have been led to believe by the corporations who reap enormous profits from human greed. The American consumer has become a willing victim of corporate America and “doorbusters.”

“God rest ye, merry merchants, may you make the Yuletide pay!”

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.

I encourage those people who are still fortunate to have the day off to stay at home, have a traditional turkey dinner with their friends and family and give thanks! And not give into innate human greed and the corporate greed that feeds off of it. There might come a day when you, too, will have to work on Thanksgiving Day, as so many people are doing now.

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Rich Gardner has been writing about the history, culture and waterways of Upstate New York for years. His articles have appeared in U.S. and Canadian publications, and one book, Learning to Walk. He is an alumnus of Brighton High School and SUNY Geneseo. He operates Upstate Resume & Writing Service in Brighton and recently moved to Corn Hill, where he is already involved in community projects. "I enjoy the 'Aha!' moments of learning new things, conceptual and literal. City living is a great teacher."

Ken Warner grew up in Brockport and first experienced Rochester as a messenger boy for a law firm in Midtown Tower. He recently moved downtown into a loft on the 13th floor of the Temple Building with a view of the Liberty Poll and works in the Powers Building overlooking Rochester’s four corners as Executive Director for UNICON, an organization devoted to bringing economic development to the community. He hopes to use his Rochester Blog to share his observations from these unique views of downtown.